Red flag law triggers talk of recalls in Colorado even in wake of another school shooting

Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock, fourth from right, and his staff.

Douglas County, Colo.,
is the epicenter of a raging debate over gun safety laws despite yet another
school shooting on Tuesday – this time at the STEM School Highlands Ranch.

Colorado U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, who grew in Highlands Ranch the son of African immigrants, has a 5-year-old niece who attends the school where seven students were wounded and one killed when two attackers – also students – opened fire at the charter school.

U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse

“Not a day goes by when
our world is not shattered by yet another senseless act of gun violence,”
Neguse said in a press release.

“While I am beyond
grateful that my niece is safe, I’m heartbroken for the parents and students
impacted by yesterday’s incident, and angry that gun violence has yet again
struck our community,” added Neguse, a Democrat and the first ever African American
from Colorado to serve in Congress.

“No parent should ever
have to receive the type of call that so many parents received yesterday, and
no child should have to be marched out of their classroom, hide under their
desk or be afraid of gunshots in their school,” Neguse continued. “The bottom line is this: Enough is enough. We must act now to
enact real reform to our nation’s gun laws. This has to stop, and we simply
cannot wait any longer to end this epidemic.”

On the same day as the STEM School Highlands Ranch
shooting, RockyMountainPost.com’s front-page
story in the Vail Daily reported on efforts by Republicans and
gun-rights groups to recall Democrats who voted in favor of Colorado’s new red
flag law, including Vail Democratic Sen. Kerry Donovan.

Named the Deputy Zackari Parrish, III, Violence
Prevention Act for a Highlands Ranch deputy murdered in an ambush in 2017, the
Extreme Risk Protection Order law passed by the legislature this session and
signed by Gov. Jared Polis allows police or family members to petition a judge
to temporarily confiscate the firearms of someone deemed a threat to themselves
or others.

Republican Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock was the
leading law enforcement proponent of the legislation, both this year and last.
Several other Republicans joined him in supporting the law last year before it
ultimately fizzled out in the then GOP-controlled Senate. This year it narrowly
made it through the now Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Douglas County commissioners in March unanimously adopted
a resolution opposing the red flag law, stating they “ … will fund
the enforcement of only those duly enacted state laws that fully respect and
support the Constitutional rights of our citizens, including their rights to
due process, to bear arms, and to defend themselves from evil.”

Colorado Ceasefire on Tuesday issued a press release
calling for the commissioners to reconsider.

“Clearly Douglas County is not immune to the ravages of
easily available guns,” Colorado Ceasefire’s Eileen McCarron said. “We hope
they reconsider that position in light of this school shooting.”

McCarron added that while it’s not yet known whether the
parents of the two suspects or anyone else at the STEM school knew about plans
for Tuesday’s attack, which occurred about 2.5 miles from where Deputy Parrish
was killed in 2017, the county’s resolution would have hampered Spurlock’s
office in any efforts to enforce the red flag law.

Rocky Mountain Gun Owners Executive Director Dudley
Brown, whose gun-rights advocacy group led the successful recall charge against
two Democrats over gun laws enacted in 2013, is now eyeing nine state
representatives and three state senators for recall over red flag votes,
including Donovan. There has also been talk of an RMGO recall of Spurlock in
Douglas County.

Asked why he thought law enforcement officials like van
Beek and Brauchler changed their minds about the law in just one year and
whether the bill changed significantly in that time span, Brown said he thought
they simply realized they didn’t want to have to enforce it.

“Nope, I don’t think they were that different, last year
and this year’s bill,” Brown said. “I don’t think it was different enough to
warrant some massive swing. It’s just this year sheriffs are able to read the
tea leaves and that their constituents are now understanding what the concept
of red flag is. And now they’re realizing that they’re going to face a big
backlash from their constituents if they’re forced to carry out these, quote,
protection orders. They don’t want to do it.”

The woman flew to Colorado as the 20-year anniversary of
that shooting approached last month, purchasing a shotgun not far from where
Tuesday’s shooting occurred at the STEM School Highlands Ranch. Columbine is
only a few miles from the scene of Tuesday’s attack, although so far there have
been no reports connecting the two alleged attackers to the national obsession
with Columbine.

Ultimately, the young woman obsessed with Columbine was
found dead from apparent suicide in the mountains west of Denver, but not
before hundreds of schools around Colorado were closed or forced into lockout
mode, including Eagle County Schools.

“You have a woman in Colorado who says she’s here to do a
school shooting and there’s evidence that she’s mentally ill or disturbed, what
do you do as a sheriff?” Weiser told RockyMountainPost.com in an April 25
interview in Vail. “Do you seek an extreme risk protection order? If someone
else has gotten one, do you enforce it or do you say, ‘I’m not going to do
anything?’”

Weiser said he expects law enforcement officials will
enforce the law in such situations in the future.

“So, you have two choices,” Weiser added. “You either
literally take the extreme risk or you act on the protective order, and when
it’s not an abstraction, but when it’s a person, like the person [last month]
saying she could do something awful, I really believe that every single law
enforcement officer will do their duty and will execute the order.”

Here’s a re-post of Tuesday’s Vail Daily story on the
RMGO recall efforts:

Vail’s Kerry
Donovan on Rocky Mountain Gun Owner recall list

Now
that the dust has settled on a frenetic session at the Colorado Legislature,
with majority Democrats passing an ambitious progressive agenda, Republicans
and their consultants and likeminded lobbying groups are gearing up to go on
the recall warpath.

Rocky
Mountain Gun Owners Executive Director Dudley Brown confirmed to the Vail Daily
on Friday that his gun-rights advocacy and lobbying group is targeting nine
Democratic state representatives and three senators, including Vail’s Kerry
Donovan. Democrats hold a slim 19-16 majority in the Senate.

“She
most definitely is on the target package,” said Brown, who was instrumental in recalling
two Democrats over gun laws in 2013 – the first ever successful
recalls of Colorado legislators. “We don’t know if we’ll do [Donovan’s Senate
District 5] or not, but she is up for consideration. Congratulations, Senator.”

Brown
said his group reserves the right to sue on constitutional grounds if the
procedural lawsuit is unsuccessful, and he has promised to go after Democrats
with aggressive recall campaigns over their votes on red flag and a host of
other issues.

“A
few Republican operatives financed by Front Range special interest groups have
threatened recalls for every elected official their candidates overwhelmingly
lost to back in November,” Donovan told the Vail Daily via a spokesman.

“I
won my election by more than 14,000 votes because I said I would work on issues
like expanding broadband access and reducing health care costs, and that is
exactly what I am doing,” Donovan added. “I plan to keep the pledges I made and
overwhelmingly won on.”

Donovan
wrote about her yes vote on red flag on her Facebook page in
March: “That will make many of you very angry. That will make many of you very
happy. That’s the work of politics. This is a commonsense and constitutional
bill that will save lives and is supported by 87% of Coloradans.”

Various
polls taken throughout the legislative process showed Coloradans in general
supporting red flag by up to 87 percent, with one Republican-leaning Magellan
Strategies poll showing 60
percent of Republicans backed the bill.

There
is currently no official recall petition of Donovan on record with the Colorado
secretary of state’s office, and there’s a high bar to even get on the ballot
in Donovan’s sprawling, seven-county Senate District 5, which she won last
November by a margin of 41,838 to 27,375 (60.4 to 39.6 percent).

To
get a recall on the ballot, valid signatures are required within 60
days from 25 percent of the total of 69,213 votes cast in SD5 last November, or
17,304 total signatures. Brown acknowledges that would be tough.

“It’s
huge, and it’s mountainous,” Brown said of SD5, which includes Democratic
strongholds like Pitkin and Eagle counties, but also much more conservative,
although less populous counties like Delta, Gunnison, Chaffee, Hinsdale and
Lake. “I mean, it’s definitely not the easy district to walk.”

“But
who’s motivated to turn out in a recall and actually cast a vote? People are
mad right now. Well, and it ain’t just guns like it was in 2013, right?” Brown
added, alluding to GOP anger over the National Right to Vote, a controversial
sex education bill and energy
and environment bills.

Because
of that, Donovan is not endorsed by the gun safety lobby Colorado Ceasefire, but the group
would support her if an official recall campaign gets underway.

“Yes,
we will support candidates who are unfairly attacked for voting with the
overwhelming majority of the citizens of the state,” said Colorado Ceasefire’s
Eileen McCarron. “Even in rural areas of the state,
there’s strong support for the extreme risk law.”

Colorado
Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, told the Vail Daily he will
vigorously defend the law from all legal challenges and expects it to persevere
on constitutional grounds if challenged, as it already has in two of the 15
states where similar legislation has passed.

“If
there’s a recall against Kerry Donovan, I will be here as often as I can to
support her and work hard on her behalf,” Weiser said. “She’s doing great work
in the legislature. Her vote on this reflected a lot of thought, a lot of care
and ultimately a conclusion of principal that she explained in a very clear and
I think compelling fashion.”

Weiser
added it will be more difficult for Republicans to successfully recall
Democrats in 2019 compared to 2013 because six years ago the recalls were
polling place elections, and now the state has gone to all mail-in ballots.

Ben
Engen of the conservative consulting company Constellation Political Consulting
has been conducting recall training sessions, including one
last month Chaffee County. He points to a Facebook video circulating from a March town hall
that Donovan conducted in Salida.

“That
video and that exchange I think is really what gets to the core of what’s going
on there,” Engen told the Vail Daily. “Part of what makes her an attractive
recall target even considering the left-leaning nature of the district is that
this isn’t so much an issue of her policy stances, it’s become an issue of her
behavior.”

Donovan
defended her behavior during that heated exchange with RMGO members on her Facebook page and
added she would not be threatened and bullied by the group.